While Max Presnell would be considered a bit of a dinosaur by many, it is refreshing to read a racing article here in NSW with some degree of objectivity about it.

I put a line through Cross Counter solely on the 'bandages first time' gear change.

Just on your computer Peg, I wondered how it could rank the horses this year when the track conditions went from good, heavy and then slow in the space of 3 hours.The times would suggest that the track never really got heavy and it probably was a pretty good surface for horses to race on by cup time.

Given the decent run of the topweight, after he missed kick badly, and the weights of the top 2, you would have to say the handicapper did a good job.Superb efforts really, those top two...did not realise they were together nearly at the 400 m or so...saw the overhead and I have to say I thought it a great race.

If you put a picture of the Melbourne Cup finish on a white background and asked anyone in racing where the race was run, they would almost certainly say somewhere in Europe.

................ they have lost sight of what makes it great: Australian horses, trainers and jockeys.......the Cup's attempts to become an international powerhouse race are becoming a retrograde step for it.

The start of the Hotham or the Lexus or whatever the hell they call it these days was delayed by 8 minutes on Derby day after the start was aborted when it was discovered that the photo finish / digital timing system had failed due to a loss of a power and had to be rebooted. All horses were loaded and ready to go when the starter called a halt. Everyone was unloaded and reloaded and the the reboot was successful and away they went.